Apathetic non-voters in the eastern Spanish region of Catalonia who find elections tedious or unexciting are being encouraged to see the act of voting as an experience comparable only to sex.

The local Socialist party's youth wing equates voting with orgasms in a campaign video for the Catalan elections that features a young woman who finds casting her vote such a turn-on that she cannot help reaching a peak of excitement in front of some bewildered polling officers.

The voting climax hopes to entice disillusioned young leftwingers to cast a vote for the region's beleagured Socialists, led by José Montilla, who look set to lose power in the region on 28 November.

The rival Catalan nationalist Convergence and Union coalition today slammed their opponent's video as "filth", while the conservative People's party accused the young socialists "of using women and attacking their dignity".

Another candidate who heads her own party, Montse Nebrera, has also released a steamy campaign video with a backing track of climatic moaning designed to sound as if it has been lifted from a pornographic film. Nebrera warns of corruption, hefty subsidies to major parties and the 4% of taxpayers' money that allegedly goes to local media while the camera trails around a house full of hastily discarded underwear, abandoned glasses of champagne and rumpled sheets.

Nebrera appears at the end in a white towel, delivering the punchline: "If we had wanted to create a scandal in order to appear in the media I would have taken this off, but we believe that not everything goes in politics."

The Socialists have led a three-way coalition with separatists and left-leanbing greens that has run the region's government for the past seven years. Polls predict that the Convergence and Union coalition will win comfortably, although without an asolute majority.